Publisher's Synopsis
Mike Hawthorn, Britain's first world motor racing champion, was internationally famous by the time of his death. However, back in the 1950s, Formula 1 was a quasi-amateur sport, in which prizes were modest, the risk of death unimaginably high and where there was scant reporting of the drivers' off-track activities. Mike's penchant for fast driving was matched by an appetite for pretty girls, beer, aeroplanes and practical jokes - all of which got him into many scrapes. What usually got him out was his charm. This re-telling of Mike's story paints an unbiased picture of a troubled young man, focusing more on feelings than feeler-gauges, and questions whether his life could have ended differently.